How would you rate your network strategy? Before you answer that question, also consider how you would rate it against your competitors.

Is your current network strategy sufficient to equip you to outperform your competitors?

As business processes continue to become increasingly dependent on a heterogeneous mix of IT infrastructure and applications that extend beyond the boundaries of the enterprise network, your network strategy becomes even more important to success.

Further, as new technologies like virtualization and cloud offer cost savings and increased levels of agility, does your network strategy have the means to deal with these new complexities?

The New Network

The network itself has been reborn with cloud computing and virtualization technologies, as the network plays a pivotal role in the delivery and performance of cloud-based services.

As a result, your network strategy will play a pivotal role in achieving significant costs savings and increased levels of agility, which is why an integrated network management solution is critical to your strategy’s success.

For example: consider how bandwidth will impact cloud services. The number of virtual servers inside the cloud is in a constant state of flux; new servers are being created all the time. Each requires network bandwidth to fulfill its intended function. If that bandwidth is inadequate, virtual server performance will suffer, and so will be the performance of the applications and services it's responsible for.

It’s not just application traffic, but the mobility of virtual machines also requires more network bandwidth as well, putting increased onus on networks.

Comprehensive Network Management Solutions

Traditional legacy network management tools cannot meet the new challenges of cloud and virtualization and demands a much more holistic approach and solutions.

Organizations willing to invest to make that transformative shift to cloud, expecting better business outcomes, need to also reengineer their network strategy.

They must think beyond compute and server virtualization to ensure they have an integrated end-to-end view of their entire infrastructure including networks

Network management must move away from simply monitoring end points ofIT infrastructure to monitor business service availability and performance.

In essence, Network management must transcend to a comprehensive service management solution to achieve the promises of cloud and virtualization.

The IBM Champion program is still accepting nominations for experts on IBM Tivoli SoftwareSubject: Nominations are open for the IBM Champion program for Tivoli SoftwareWe're pleased to announced that the IBM Champion program, hosted by developerWorks, has expanded to recognize and reward clients and partners who evangelize and advocate Tivoli Software, share their expertise, and help grow the community.

The IBM Champion program recognizes exceptional contributors to the technical community -- clients and partners who work alongside IBM to build solutions for a smarter planet. An IBM Champion is an individual who leads and mentors his or her peers and motivates them toward IBM solutions and services. Champions can be found running user groups, managing websites, speaking at conferences, answering questions in online forums, and writing blogs, submitting wiki articles, sharing how-to videos, and writing technical books.

The IBM Champion program recognizes and thanks these innovative thought leaders, amplifying their voice and increasing their sphere of influence in the technical community.

Benefits for an IBM Champion In addition to merchandise customized with the IBM Champion logo, IBM Champions will receive special visibility, recognition and networking opportunities at IBM events and conferences. They will receive special access to product development teams, and invitations and discounts to events and conferences. IBM Champions will receive online recognition via their Tivoli Community profiles (on Service Management Connect and the Tivoli User Community), with a special designation of "IBM Champion" and a listing of notable achievements. IBM Champions retain their title for one year, after which they can apply for renewal.

Nomination process and eligibilitySelf nominations and nominations by proxy will be accepted online through August 19th, 2011. A panel of IBMers will evaluate each nominee's contributions over the past 12 months, considering community impact, expertise, and overall community contributions, both in terms of quality and level of participation across a wide variety of activities. Nominees will be notified by IBM if they are selected. Although IBM employees are not eligible for the program, they are encouraged to nominate deserving partners and clients.

For more information To learn more about the IBM Champion program and to submit a nomination, visit: www.ibm.com/developerworks/champion

Utilities are deploying millions of smart meters across the globe for energy, water and gas metering and expecting over 300 million smart meters globally in next few years. These meters require networks to be secure, reliable and scalable.

To help utilities monitor and manage smart meter events, alarms, and data, IBM is launching Intelligent Metering Network Management software for greater visibility, control and automation of the smart metering infrastructure.The IBM software taps data captured from smart meters – on service availability and assurance – then correlates it according to policies and thus gain greater insight enabling operational improvements.When data events fall outside the normal patterns, the IBM offering can automatically trigger customer service to create a work order or for staff to review the issue and take the appropriate actions.By doing this, IBM software can help detect and even prevent network faults.Furthermore, with more insight into the location of faults, the utility can manage their services more efficiently with fewer truck roll outs.

IBM Intelligent Metering Network Management provides an end-to-end service management approach with real-time monitoring of the wide variety of devices residing on the transmission and distribution networks. The solution enables utility companies to create a ‘manager of managers’ by integrating service management for multiple devices and networks into a single network operations view.

Introducing Dean Kamen, who will deliver the Guest Keynote at Pulse 2011, "The Future Belongs to Inventors"

As an inventor and physicist, Dean Kamen has dedicated his life to developing technologies that help people lead better lives. As an inventor, he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. The array of products and technologies invented and developed by Mr. Kamen and the engineering team at DEKA is extremely broad. Two notable breakthrough medical devices invented and developed by DEKA are the HomeChoice™ portable dialysis machine, marketed by Baxter Healthcare, and the iBOT™ Mobility System, a sophisticated mobility aid developed for Johnson & Johnson. With the Segway™ Human Transporter, Mr. Kamen aspired to improve upon the most basic form of transportation, walking, by allowing people to go farther, move more quickly, and carry more without separating them from their everyday walking environment.

Among Mr. Kamen’s proudest accomplishments is founding FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology. In 2009, its flagship program, the FIRST Robotics Competition, will reach more than 42,000 high-school students on close to 1,700 teams in 40 regional competitions, seven district competitions, and one national championship. The FIRST Robotics Competition teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.

As the world becomes increasingly instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, communications service providers (CSPs) will play a critical role making industries, cities, and our planet smarter. CSPs build and operate the underlying fabric that interconnects the world, captures and makes sense of the data generated by trillions of instrumented devices, and provides the location and context-based intelligence that can drive new, exciting services. Our clients are embracing the smarter planet promise by deploying smarter solutions that can help make communications smarter and deliver profitable revenue, cost savings, and deeper customer satisfaction.

It is time to meet again at Mobile World Congress 2011 and we are looking forward to seeing you there for another successful event in beautiful Barcelona! MWC agenda shows an impressive list of CEO keynote speakers and includes more than two dozen conference sessions covering a range of technology and business topics, featuring industry experts from around the globe. Check out the full MWC Agenda and look for the TM Forum session with Denis Kennelly, CTO & VP Business Development, telecom, IBM Tivoli.

Please visit IBM in Hall 1, Booth C31 and The Embedded Mobile House in the Courtyard to interact with our experts to understand how IBM's smarter communications solutions help Communications Service Providers:

Register now for the North America Network Management for Communication Service Providers next virtual meeting on January 18th! In this virtual meeting, IBM will provide a fresh overview of the IBM Tivoli Service Management Roadmap as it pertains specifically to Communications Service Providers. We are partnering with customers and sharing knowledge and best practices for CSPs. This is a great opportunity for you to drive personal and CSP user group issues to IBM and network with others. Hope to see you there!

After a century of dominance by voice services, demand is shifting to a much broader set of services. And with the advent of convergence, MPLS, wireless and voice over IP, content-based offerings and other market-impacting technologies, service providers must adapt new innovative methods to manage both next generation networks, service performance and the overall customer experience. The Network Management and Service Assurance stream at Pulse 2011 will explore how effective network and service assurance enables control of the entire communication and content management infrastructure. It will discuss strategies and methods for gaining greater visibility into how key network and application elements impact service quality and delivery. Sessions will highlight best practices and client experiences across service quality management, event and performance management and other OSS/BSS functions.

Smart Industry Solutions track: The “smarter planet” is creating opportunities for new, differentiated services. From smart energy grids to smart cities, this track will explore how visibility, control, and automation can be leveraged to deliver and manage new services that span business and IT.Presentations from industry experts and clients will include Telecommunications, Energy & Utilities, Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Chemicals & Petroleum, Government, Healthcare and more.

Industry Roundtables: In these "by invitation only" sessions, client executives meet to share best practices and industry challenges and solutions. Industry roundtables are 2.5 hour sessions followed by a private reception. Each roundtable is lead by Tivoli, GBS, S&D and SWG executives, following an open discussion format with NO slides. Note that attendance is VERY limited.

Network Management and Service Assurance for Communication Service Providers track: This track will show Service Providers how IBM helps create an integrated, automated Service Assurance environment.Effective network and service assurance enables control of the entire communication and content management infrastructure, and visibility into how key network and application elements impact service quality and delivery.Sessions will highlight IBM Tivoli’s latest service quality, event and performance management capabilities by sharing best practices and telecommunications client experiences.

Pulse will return to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas February 27 through March 2, 2011 to bring over 6000 attendees the best practices, solutions and expertise needed to help organizations design, deliver and manage new, innovative business services - smarter services that will drive unique client value and competitive advantage.

With a dedicated Network Management and Service Assurance for Service Providers track, a Smarter Industry Solutions track, a Telecommunications Industry Roundtable and so much more, Pulse 2011 offers you the preeminent forum for learning how you can transform business models, increase innovation and exceed client expectations.

MPLS VPNs have become the defacto standard for providing virtual private networks across the WAN for service providers, governments and enterprises. MPLS is now a well established technology but managing VPN services in MPLS environments is still a challenge due to the complexity and scale of typical MPLS networks.

IBM Tivoli Network Manager has had an MPLS discovery and management capability for a while and this has been enhanced with additional capabilities over a number of releases. Today I'm going to talk about how the next release of ITNM, v3.9, can increase operator efficiency and reduce the time taken to repair faults via three new capabilities - enhanced OAM (Operations, Administration & Maintenance) tooling, "links as 1st class objects" and enhanced "Service Affecting Events".

The OAM 'WebTool' infrastructure in ITNM v3.9 has been subject to a major overhaul that paves the way for more out-of-the-box content and greater exploitation of this important capability. The ITNM WebTool infrastructure allows operators to run ITNM server-local executables or sequences of CLI commands against network devices via Telnet and, new to 3.9, SSH by exploiting the device communications infrastructure. ITNM v3.9 also introduces the WebTool infrastructure to Microsoft Windows platforms for the first time.

Out-of-the-box, ITNM ships a number of OAM tools, including MPLS troubleshooting and diagnostic tools, which are accessible in-context from the devices displayed in the ITNM GUIs. The WebTool infrastructure makes it easy to add new tools to ITNM by adding XML files that describe the action of the tool (Local Executable/Telnet/SSH) including expected parameters, their types, default values, and how the output of the tool should be presented to the operator via HTML templates. Once the tool has been defined, it can be run via the CLI of the ITNM server or added to the right-click menu hierarchy for contextual-launches from the ITNM GUIs.

The value for MPLS management of the new WebTool infrastructure is that operators can be provided with a single tool that automates the running of numerous parameterised CLI commands against multiple devices in one invocation of the tool. This saves a huge amount of time given that the operators don't need to manually login to the device(s) and run each, potentially parameterised command. For instance, Cisco suggests that the following tasks be performed on each device when troubleshooting MPLS, all of which can be automated: - Verify That Routing Protocol Runs, Verify CEF Switching, Verify MPLS, Ping the Neighbours, Verify Label Distribution, Verify Label Bindings, Verify That Labels Are Set.

The second capability, "links as 1st class objects", is a major improvement in ITNM’s visualization and contextual OAM (Operations, Administration & Maintenance) tooling. ITNM v3.9 significantly expands on previous capabilities by allowing operators to determine network link capacity and state at-a-glance via variable line thicknesses and line colour-coding and status annotations. In addition to this, ITNM v3.9 also provides operators with the ability to invoke OAM tools in-context of a selected link and so they can, for instance, ping both ends of an IP addressed link with a single mouse-click.

For MPLS networks, the value of determining link capacity, state and enhanced OAM tooling is that operators immediately gain link-specific status information and that they can invoke complex sequences of troubleshooting and diagnostic tools in-context of MPLS-related connections.

For instance, if a Provider Edge (PE)-to-Customer Edge (CE) connection fails, ITNM shall colour-code and state-annotate the failed link and provide the operator with the opportunity to run OAM tools in-context of the specific connection. In the case of an MPLS VPN, this could include running CLI commands on the PE router and retrieving customer contact information for the site where the CE device is located.

The last improvement is an enhancement to ITNM’s MPLS-related event correlation capabilities. ITNM recently introduced 'Service Affecting Event' (SAE) functionality that, alongside standard Root Cause Analysis (RCA), puts network service context around events relating to the managed network, such as a PE-CE link failure being considered to affect a specific VPN.

ITNM v3.9 expands on the existing SAE correlation capabilities by being able to exploit a separate list of discovered ITNM resources that are considered to be those resources that a defined service depends on. For instance, an MPLS VPN between two sites will have PE router interfaces in the VPNs Virtual Routing & Forwarding (VRF) instances but a separate dependency on interfaces that the PE router uses to connect to the Provider-Core (P) router in the network.

The first adoption of this new capability is realized by a new ITNM discovery agent and enhanced MPLS VPN objects that include the list of PE->P and P->PE router facing interfaces for each VPN. This allows ITNM to take into account an 'extra hop' into the network when determining whether or not a specific VPN has been affected.

The value of this capability to the operator is that a seemingly separate interface problem on a PE or P-router can be associated with VPN instances using the specific pair of interfaces to connect the PE router to the P router in the core of the network, even if the PE router is multi-homed.

I hope you've found this post about how ITNM can more effectively manage your mission-critical MPLS VPN services informative and useful.

Our latest release of IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager (TNPM 1.3) saw the adoption of an ‘Outside In Design’ methodology for the design of our operational console user interface. This involved early consolation with our customer base and continuous customers input throughout the development cycle to ensure that the visual layout, navigation and design meet their needs.

Exposing storyboards, concepts and prototypes to our customer base for the first time in the product led to the emergence of a new partnership model of software design between the customers are our development team here in Ireland. Combined with the introduction of Cognos based reporting, the operational console results in a dramatically improved user interface from previous releases.

While we always captured customer needs to drive product requirements, we have now brought them directly into the early stages of product development. This ensures not only that they directly influence the look and feel of the product, but that it is now designed around the user. Given the perspicuity of customer need this methodology delivers it is now firmly established as the basis of future release design, which we hope will deliver a superior customer experience as we continue to invest in Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager.

Instead of booking a flight and hotel, instead of packing your bags, and instead of spending extra time traveling, join us for a virtual meeting!

We are all busy and traveling to a local meeting can be time consuming. My experience is that virtual meetings saves time, is structured, simple and yet it can be the best 60-90 minutes of your day. One of the greatest assets we have is the knowledgewe gain through the various tools and resources to us. One of those resources is the Global Tivoli User Community. If you are looking to get information, connect with others and make your views be heard then why don't you join a virtual user group. These two Network Management for Communication Service Providers groups for Europe and North America are new and will be meeting periodically through out the year via a conference call and the web to gain knowledge and exchange information.

Change today is constant, whether within an individual network or reaching across the entire instrumented, interconnected and intelligent world. And managing change, especially when it comes to network device configuration, is essential.

This need for change management capabilities is particularly important in today’s environment of rapid growth in network size, complexity and criticality. Many organizations find that managing configuration is more difficult than ever. While the number of devices that require configuration is increasing, IT resources often remain limited and IT budgets can be flat or declining. Meanwhile, the network is more important than ever to the everyday functions and the continued success of the business.

Without configuration management, errors introduced during change can damage a host of critical operations from provisioning to performance, and from availability to security. Consider the

following questions:

●How do you control who can touch what network device and what commands they are allowed to use on each device?

●Do you maintain a complete log of all changes made to each device and by whom?

●How do you make sure that only syntactically and logically correct commands to be sent to a device?

●How do you enable network engineers to instantly see what changed on a device, who changed it, and when it changed and why?

●How do you know when a device has changed and requires an incremental backup?

●Can you roll back a device without losing service?

●How do you prevent configuration mistakes from happening in your network?

●How do you enforce your network configuration policies?

●Do you have a common scorecard for compliance across the entire network?

With a configuration and policy management solution, the organization can now meet these challenges and take its network management capabilities to a new level. Configuration management solutions can extend management reach into devices and network areas that need greater attention, for increased network reliability and reduced chance of performance degradation due to error.

Configuration management solutions provide a persistent database that stores physical and logical aspects of the network in one location for use in real-time monitoring of changes and for alerting administrators when a change is incorrect—whether it is causing a functional problem or not. The aim is to ensure that configurations are accurate and changes comply with organizational, and to provide administrators with deep visibility into the network and its devices to help prevent and resolve change-related problems.

Tivoli Netcool Configuration Manager R6.1 complements existing Tivoli Network Management capabilities provided by OMNIbus and Network Manager by adding the ability to make changes, ensure changes are functionally correct & comply with corporate policies and monitor multiple inline and out of band types of changes. With out of the box integration with OMNIbus and Network Manager, Tivoli Netcool Configuration Manager R6.1 provides the ability to see what changed, who changed it and when it changed within the context of existing OMNIbus & Network Manager views and how the changes correlate to network events.

Communications service providers and medium to large enterprises must have smarter network operations to properly manage the demand put on networks by the latest services, technologies, and applications. Network performance management is more important than ever because “slow is the new broke.” Under performing networks pose several risks from unhappy customers to unrealized revenue potential. Tivoli Netcool Performance Manager (TNPM) v1.3 offers innovative new solutions to help our clients run fully-optimized legacy and next-generation networks and minimize the dreaded service disruption.

TNPM 1.3 introduces a new console technology, Tivoli Integrated Portal (TIP), and a new reporting engine, Tivoli Common Reporting (TCR) based on Cognos. These new technologies offer additional business value to fixed/IP and mobile customers using our network performance management solutions today. In addition, these technologies enable a consistent user experience across the broad Tivoli solution portfolio.

Key common features for fixed/IP and mobile PM: • Navigation between Webtop/Omnibus and TNPM • State-of-the-art Reporting Tool through integration of Cognos capabilities with Tivoli Common Reporting in the Tivoli Integrated Portal (TIP)

Key new features for fixed/IP: • Composite Resources for service-oriented KPI modeling of logical network resources, e.g. a pair of network connections, or of a service such as VPN • Mass Data Export of fixed/IP PM data • Support for AIX (IBM O/S) is now supported for all TNPM components for fixed/IP

In summary, we’re very excited about the changes in this release and know you’ll find a lot of value in TNPM 1.3. If you own other Netcool products such as Netcool/Omnibus or ITNM today, ask us how TNPM can help complete your view into consolidated operations management.

I do a couple of couple of dozen briefings a year and inevitably I get asked to talk about Business Service Management (BSM), even though I'm not the BSM guy. Why? Because we all know that BSM is important, it's how companies visualize and relate what's happening throughout IT and the business via models. Everybody's talking about it and some are even doing something about it. It's what's getting the hype in magazines and is the darling of the analyst community right after cloud (which is a topic for another day). The fascinating thing that happens in these briefings is that the bulk of the discussion time isn't spent on constructing the business models or in the lots of cool ways to build dashboards, but rather about where all that data comes from, how to discover all the sources of it, how to identify what's healthy and what's not and how the heck you manage it. This is the heart of the matter, it's fascinating that what gets left out of the discussion by many vendors -- Consolidated Operations. Consolidated Ops is what helps deliver on the promise and potential of BSM. The ability to integrate and contextualize the feeds from thousands or tens of thousands of devices generating a deluge of data is the only way to enable a successful transition from resource-driven reactive management to services-driven proactive management. It's amazing how so many vendors seem to gloss over the importance of the need for broad and deep integrated event management ... In order to make this miracle happen, we need more information. We don't need more data, nobody wants more data. We're drowning in data, we've got way too much data. What we lack is information. Data only becomes information through context. Context is king. Context is what enables us to move from being an organization that is "192.7.6.3 ping unreachable" to "The router BFG973, building 42, floor 3, rack 7 slot 3 owned by Jerry W., pager 512-823-8305 has an 83% chance of reaching I/O saturation in the next 48 hours, effecting the customer order entry line of business which has an SLA penalty of $7500/hour. The last change was to Big Buffers max, setting was 150, setting is 20" (and a nice link to click on the link to the last authorized change which says it should have been set to 200 and a link to provisioning to complete the correct change if we want to go really nuts). If you're carrying the pager, which problem do you want to work? In a retail banking operation, if the print servers are down in the branch office and the central mortgage loan application is running 2 minutes slow, which is more important to work first? Does it make a difference if it's a weekend? The ability to create this context is at the core of event management. Being able to incorporate performance data, config data, change data and fault data into a cohesive view of the enterprise is what enables operations to move from a reactionary force driven by customers reporting outages to a proactive team that is able to manage the resources in terms of the value they provide to the organization, rather than if they are available or not. Now we can understand the value of "Slow is the new broke". Managing to red is dead isn't sufficient.We want to use this blog as a place to talk about how we're delivering on the promise of IBM Service Management, Dynamic Infrastructure, Business Service Management, Consolidated Operations for OSS and the data center. Operations is one of the toughest gigs in IT. If you're doing a perfect job, you are invisible, but let something break and suddenly your bosses know your kid's soccer game schedule. Raising the capability, visibility and recognition of operations teams is something my colleagues and I are passionate about. We hope this starts a conversation that you get as excited about as we are.